A Forever Christmas

Chapter Thirteen

The police detective froze as the image of the young woman on the bulletin board he’d just passed registered with his brain.

Stunned, he backtracked the few steps he’d taken and stared at the eight-by-ten photocopy secured onto the overfilled board with thumbtacks haphazardly stuck into two of its corners. The quality of the photograph wasn’t the best, but it was good enough to stop the breath in his lungs.

That was her, it had to be.

But how could it be?

Dorothy was dead.

There were three small, concise paragraphs on the sheet directly below the photograph. The first time he scanned them, not a single word penetrated his brain. Banking down his mounting agitation, he read the paragraphs again. And then a third time. Finally the fog around his brain began to release its hold. He could make out the words.

The woman had been found in Forever, Texas. Whoever had sent out the poster was trying to find out who she was. Apparently the woman had been involved in an accident and had lost her memory.

Yeah, right, he silently jeered.

Anger, relief and disbelief all stampeded through him as he reread the words for yet a fourth time.

Maybe it was true. Maybe Dorothy had lost her memory. He turned the idea over in his head. That meant a clean slate, a clean start.

He smiled for the first time since the poster had caught his attention. If it was true, maybe this time she would get things right. There’d be no problems if she just got things right.

He could bring her home and start over.

A second chance.

He nodded to himself as he took down the poster. Maybe it would work out, after all.

Changing direction, he went in search of his lieutenant. He was going to need some time off to go down to Forever and bring her back.

Forever.

He laughed shortly under his breath. Had to be some little pimple of a town that undoubtedly housed a couple of hayseed families and a bar. He’d never heard of it before, but that didn’t matter. He’d find it. And bring her back.

One way or another.

* * *

“SHE GOT YOU TO GET a Christmas tree, huh?” Alma asked her brother the second Gabe walked into the sheriff’s office the next morning.

He was late and that wasn’t like him. Ordinarily she’d rag on him for that, but the Christmas tree purchase was just too good to pass up without a comment. That took front and center.

Gabe could see that his sister had been all but bursting, waiting to spring the subject on him. That was Alma, all right. He supposed he should count himself lucky that his sister hadn’t called him in the middle of the night to laugh about the change he’d undergone since he’d saved Angel’s life.

It seemed that by saving hers, he’d transformed his own.

He did his best to look as if he was scowling at his sister. He and Angel had gone directly home with the tree, not stopping to talk to anyone. How the hell did Alma find out?

“Who told you?” he asked.

“I have my sources,” she informed him smugly.

“Mona saw you when she was coming home after paying Ed Sawyer’s colicky mare a visit,” Joe Lone Wolf told him matter-of-factly in his monotone voice. Gabe turned around to look at the sheriff’s brother-in-law. Joe shrugged, as if the outcome had been predestined and inevitable. “She told me, I told Alma.”

Gabe sighed. He should have known that nothing remained secret or private in Forever. Some things just took longer to get around than others. But they all got around eventually.

He shrugged as he sat down with the coffee he’d gotten at Miss Joan’s when he’d dropped Angel off. It was still steaming.

“No big deal,” he told his sister with an indifferent shrug. Removing the lid, he tossed it into the wastebasket. He figured the coffee wasn’t going to last him long enough to require being covered again.

“No big deal?” Alma echoed, getting up and crossing to his desk. “When I asked you at Thanksgiving if you needed any help in picking out a Christmas tree for your new place, you gave me a ten-minute speech about ‘not needing any commercial trappings’ to remind you what holiday to celebrate.” Making no effort to suppress the grin on her lips, she pinned him down with a penetrating look. “As I recall, you were pretty adamant.”

Gabe took a long sip of his coffee as he looked away. “So I changed my mind,” he said with a touch of impatience. “It happens.”

Alma’s grin turned into an utterly enigmatic smile. “Yes, it seems that it certainly does.”

“Don’t make a big deal out of it,” he warned her.

“Okay,” Alma agreed. “No big deal.” She pinned him with a look. “Does that mean you don’t care if I got any responses to that poster of Angel I sent out?”

He hadn’t thought he could switch from being seemingly casual to a man on tactical alert in under a second, but he could and he did.

“Did you?” he demanded sharply.

“Then you do care,” Alma concluded.

“Alma, give me a straight answer to my question or so help me…”

When his voice trailed off, she jumped right in. “So help you what? Help you level with your sister?” Alma suggested.

Joe rose, unfolding his lanky torso. “I think I’ll look in on Ben, see how our resident town drunk is doing this morning,” Joe said to no one in particular.

“See if he’s sober and ready to go back to his wife,” Alma called after Joe’s departing back.

“It’s either one or the other. If he’s sober, he won’t be ready to go back to his wife,” Joe pointed out without turning around.

Turning back to her brother, she coaxed, “Why don’t you just admit that Angel’s gotten to you? After all, she’s beautiful, bright, cooks up a storm and anyone with eyes can see that she’s just crazy about you.” Alma rested her case. “In short, she’s everything I ever wanted for you.”

“Fine, ‘Mom.’” He deliberately inclined his head submissively, although he did manage to keep the sarcasm down. “She’s gotten to me. Now answer the question. Has anyone called about the poster?”

Alma dropped her teasing attitude and shook her head.

“Not so far, no.” She felt obligated to add a coda to that. “The posters probably got lost in the shuffle.”

“Most people don’t pay that much attention to something that comes via snail mail these days,” the sheriff commented.

Brother and sister turned to look toward Rick’s office. Their boss was standing outside the doorway, nursing what amounted to his third cup of hot tar.

“How long have you been standing there?” Alma asked.

Though Rick was generally affable, Alma was the only one in the office who ever challenged him or acted as if they were basically on the same level. She’d been with the sheriff’s department the longest length of time and figured that put her on close to equal footing with Rick.

“Long enough to decide that there isn’t a brother and sister on earth who don’t argue,” Rick replied, a half smile on his lips. “So, no takers for our amnesia victim?” he asked, looking to confirm what he’d overheard.

“None,” she replied. “And I haven’t found any matches to missing persons files since our system came back up yesterday,” she added.

“Would be nice to tell ‘Angel’ who she really is by Christmas,” Rick speculated.

Alma exchanged glances with her brother. “Maybe Angel doesn’t want to know who she is,” Alma suggested.

Had Angel said something to Alma? Gabe wondered. “What makes you say that?” he asked suspiciously.

Alma shrugged. “Just a gut feeling,” she admitted. “I figure if it really mattered so much to her, she would have been pushing us to try harder.”

“Meaning what?” Gabe asked. Was she suggesting that Angel wanted to cover something up?

“Down, Gabe. I meant no disrespect here. It’s just that maybe, on some level, she’s afraid that she won’t want to find out who she is. Maybe, when you found her, she was already running from something.”

Gabe had his own theories on that. He snorted. “Most likely whoever it was who left those fatal notches on her brake lines.”

Rick nodded, agreeing. “Sounds like a good theory to me. Too bad the sedan was so badly damaged. There might have been a decent set of prints or two we could have lifted.”

Gabe nodded, but his mind had raced ahead and was now elsewhere. What if someone did recognize her from that photocopy Alma had sent out? How was he going to be able to determine that whoever came looking for Angel wasn’t the guy who’d obviously set out to kill her?

He frowned. “Really wish you hadn’t sent out that poster, Alma.”

“We had to do something,” she pointed out defensively. “Can’t just hang back and let her go on wondering who she is for the rest of her life.”

What Alma said was true enough on the surface, but what if what Angel found out was something she would have rather left buried in the recess of her mind? He’d be doing her no favors by digging all that up.

Just then, a loud noise erupted from the rear of the building where their jail cells were located. Stunned, all three law enforcement officers quickly made their way to the back where they discovered Ben Walker, the man known affectionately as one of Forever’s two resident drunks, was standing on his cot, looking properly terrified by the slip of a woman standing on the other side of the cell’s bars, shouting at him to stop acting like the state’s biggest ass and the greatest disappointment of her life. The sentiment was reinforced and peppered with a great many blue words.

“Now, Eleanor, you know I’m going to have to fine you for all those cuss words coming out of that genteel mouth of yours,” Rick told the woman mildly. Glancing toward his brother-in-law, he asked, “How much is Eleanor up to now, Joe?”

Joe paused for a second to calculate, then answered, “Twenty-five dollars by last count.”

“Well, it’s all worth it,” Eleanor declared with a toss of her dyed flaming-red hair. “You’d cuss, too, if you had to be married to that poor excuse for a man,” she informed the sheriff, gesturing dismissively at her husband.

Rick took hold of the woman’s shoulders and looked into her eyes. “Eleanor, it’s almost Christmas and in the spirit of the season, I’m going to forget about your fine—but I want you to practice a little of that Christian charity you’re so famous for and give your husband another chance.”

“Another chance?” she echoed incredulously. “I’ve already given him another chance. I’ve given him a dozen extra chances—”

“Then it shouldn’t be all that hard to give him one more,” Rick said amiably. There was resistance in the woman’s rounded face. “Do it as a favor to the rest of us,” he coaxed.

Eleanor Walker, who had at one point in time been considered to be quite stunning, sighed dramatically. Twice. And then she shrugged in surrender, mumbling, “All right, but only for you, Sheriff.”

“Thank you, Eleanor. Can’t ask for anything better than that.” Rick looked pointedly at the man still standing on his cot, eyeing his wife fearfully. It made for a ludicrous scene, seeing as how Ben was twice his wife’s size. “And you, Ben, I want you to promise not to touch a drop of anything with alcohol in it for the next thirty days—”

“Thirty days!” Eleanor cried, outraged that the time limit was so short.

“Thirty days?” Ben lamented at the same time. The expression on his face clearly indicating that he viewed thirty days to be close to an eternity.

“Thirty days,” Rick repeated. “Otherwise, I’m locking you both up—in the same cell.” Inserting his key in the lock of his prisoner’s door, he looked from husband to wife, then back again, waiting. “So is it a deal?” he asked.

Having no choice, Ben nodded sheepishly. “It’s a deal.”

“Deal,” his wife grumbled, spitting the four-letter word out.

Rick paid no attention to either tone, only to the promises that had been given. “That’s what I like to hear,” he told both parties as he pulled open the cell door.

Ben never took his eyes off his wife, watching her fearfully, as he exited the cell.

As the sheriff walked out with his deputies, his former prisoner and Ben’s wife, he was surprised to find someone waiting for them in the office.

“Hi,” Angel greeted them brightly. “I heard your voices so I let myself in. I hope you don’t mind,” she said to Rick.

“Not at all. Is there something I can help you with, or are you here to see Gabe?” Rick asked, and then he couldn’t help adding, “What is that insanely delicious aroma?”

“Well, that’s actually kind of the reason why I’m here,” Angel confessed. She placed her hand on top of the old-fashioned wicker basket she’d set down on the desk closest to the door: Gabe’s desk. There was an equally old-fashioned red-and-white-checkered cloth covering the length of the basket. It did nothing to suppress the warm aroma.

Gabe quickly crossed to her side. The conversation with Alma was still very fresh in his mind. Had someone tried to get in contact with her? Focusing strictly on her and not on the food that she’d obviously brought, it was hard to miss the concern in his voice.

“Is something wrong?” he asked.

The question caught her off guard. She looked at him quizzically. “No, why should it be?”

Alma stepped forward. “I think he’s trying to say that it’s the middle of the morning and he’s wondering what you’re doing here at this time.”

Angel grinned at the man who so easily sent her pulse racing with just a touch. “I didn’t know you came with subtitles,” she said to him. “We were running late this morning,” she reminded Gabe with a pleased smile.

Having alternated between making love and decorating the tree for half the night, they’d both slept through the alarm this morning and barely had time to get dressed before they were due at work. In the interest of time, breakfast had been a casualty.

“So I asked Miss Joan if I could bring you breakfast once the rush was over. Miss Joan said she’d only agree if I made enough for everyone in the office,” Angel explained, pulling the checkered cloth from the basket. “So I did.”

“I really do love that woman,” Rick enthused, his mouth watering already.

“A word to the wise. Better not let Olivia hear you say that in that tone,” Alma warned her boss with a laugh.

It was no secret that his attorney wife was out of her element in the kitchen. “When I met her, Olivia thought a stove was just an extra flat surface she could stack her legal papers on. I love her in a completely different way than I do Miss Joan,” he explained even as he began to dig in.

Pleased, Angel finished unpacking everything she had brought to feed Gabe, the other deputies and the sheriff. Having arranged the different platters on the desk, she stood back to watch everyone dig in.

Conversations, laughter and a feeling of well-being permeated the office. Lingering and taking up the plates that Angel pressed into their hands, even Ben Walker and his wife seemed to be getting along.

Angel observed it all and smiled, contented. She’d never felt happier in her life. Deep down in her soul, she knew that for a fact, even if the life she was referencing only spanned three weeks.

She caught herself offering up a small prayer that nothing would ever change—even though she knew it probably had to.

But for now, everything was perfect and she was very, very grateful. And especially that she had Gabe.

Plate in hand, he sought her out and affectionately pressed a kiss to her temple. “You’re the best,” he told her just before he started eating.

So are you, she thought, deciding to tell him that when they were alone.

That made two things she needed to tell him when they were alone, she thought.

A smile of anticipation curved her mouth.